Ukrainian rescuers working at the site of a deadly Russian rocket strike on a residential building in Poltava, Ukraine, on Saturday. File photo Ukraine State Emergency Service/EPA-EFE/
Feb. 4 (UPI) — Seven people were killed and at least 51 were injured overnight after Russia fired missiles and dozens of attack drones at targets across the eastern half of Ukraine, authorities said.
The biggest loss of life was in the northeastern province of Kharkiv where at least five people were killed and 38 injured Tuesday morning after a Russian missile struck the city of Izium, 30 miles northeast of Sloviansk.
“According to preliminary data, the occupiers used a ballistic missile,” Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said in a post on his social media account.
He said many of the injured had been hospitalized and at least one person was buried under the rubble.
“Administrative buildings have been partially destroyed and a five-story residential building has been damaged,” wrote Syniehubov.
Syniehubov reported earlier that a strike on Kupiansk injured a 71-year-old woman. Writing on Telegram, he said a separate attack on the town had damaged an ambulance.
Drones targeting the border town of Seredyna-Buda in the neighboring Sumy province injured a civilian, according to the province’s military administration.
The town sits against Ukraine’s border with Russia’s Bryansk region.
Donetsk Gov. Vadym Filashkin reported in a social media post Tuesday that a civilian was killed in the key front-line city of Pokrovsk, where Ukrainian forces are battling to prevent Russian forces from breaking through to the west into neighboring Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine’s industrial heartland.
Filashkin said a civilian was injured 80 miles to the northeast in the village of Rubtsi and a second in the village of Bahatyr, 25 miles southwest of Pokrovsk.
In Kherson province, one person was killed and nine were injured after 29 settlements, including the capital Kherson, came under attack, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said in an update on Telegram.
Prokudin said the attacks targeted social infrastructure and residential districts, damaging 12 private homes and many private cars.
In the capital, Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported that falling debris from drones damaged a medical clinic and an 18-story building under construction in the downtown Pechersk district.
The Ukraine Air Force said it shot down more than half of the 65 Shahed-type UAVs, with most of the casualties and damage caused by falling debris. It said it had confirmation its aircraft, anti-aircraft missile forces, electronic warfare units and mobile fire groups downed 37 drones over Poltava, Sumy, Kyiv, Chernihiv and Cherkasy oblasts.
Cherkasy Gov. Ihor Taburets said 12 of those were brought down over the central province setting three businesses ablaze but causing no casualties.
The attacks forced state-energy provider Ukrenergo to implement “controlled” emergency power outages across wide swathes of Ukraine in Kharkiv, Sumy, Donetsk, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia and Kirovohrad provinces — with Dnipropetrovsk and Cherkasy seeing partial shutdowns.
The latest airborne assault comes after at least 14 people were killed, including two children, and 17 injured in a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the early hours of Saturday in the city of Poltava, mid-way between Kharkiv and Kremenchuk on the Dnipro River.